A Killer's Touch. Michael Benson
it from here,” they told Pope, who felt dissed. He was invited to join a new search team being put together just outside the trailer. The trooper and the corporal opted out of that detail and forged off on their own. Pope pointed his Marauder toward the corner of Cranberry and Toledo Blade. At that site was the staging area for the canine units, Fish & Wildlife, and the Sarasota Response Team.
Pope talked to a captain and told him his story. Turned out the search teams had not been told where the arrest was made, nor had they heard about the evidence found on the car. Pope and a team, which included dogs, headed for the spot he had in mind.
The initial reports in the local papers befuddled residents. One typical comment from a North Port woman was “Maybe I need more coffee, but this story doesn’t make sense. Surely, no one would give him a shovel after seeing her in that situation.” She wasn’t the last person to question Harold Muxlow’s actions.
Harold Muxlow had not been quick to act, but his daughter had. She, too, seemed confused about her dad’s hesitance when she said, “It’s common sense. The woman needed help. She was yelling, ‘Help!’ If someone needs help, then you get help. You don’t stop and think about it.”
CHAPTER 3
JANUARY 18, 2008
At 1:38 A.M., police officers in South Venice knocked on the door of Robert Salvador and woke him up. When was the last time he’d seen Michael King? Did he know the whereabouts of Denise Lee? Robert said he knew no Lees and hadn’t seen King lately.
He talked to the officers for about five minutes and then they left. He and his wife went on the Internet and found out what it was all about. Robert thought about it, and decided he might be deeply involved in this. His best bet was to tell the law everything he knew.
In the morning, he called the Venice police, the agency closest to him. They said the case was not in their jurisdiction and was being handled by the North Port Police Department. They gave him the number to call.
So Robert Salvador went to see Detective Morales, and Salvador had a very interesting story to tell about the captured suspect. He apologized for the delay, but he’d been a little slow on the uptake as to the importance of events. It took a while to sink in that anything quite this horrible could be real.
Robert was a married man with six kids, a self-employed construction worker. He knew King as a plumber. They’d worked jobs at the same site. Robert remodeled or renovated. King did the pipes. Sometimes King tore up a wall to get at the pipes and Salvador came in immediately after to patch up the holes. He’d known King for a couple of years, and really got to know him when he did a job at King’s house on Sardinia. After that, Salvador and King hung out.
Once King asked him to go deep-sea fishing with him, and Robert took his wife with him. King was with an older couple, whom he introduced as his girlfriend’s parents.
There was a period of time when Robert didn’t hear from Michael King. He thought maybe King had lost his job. He heard from a third party that King had moved back to Michigan, where he was from. Then King called him, said he was back in Florida, and was wondering if Salvador knew of work. He claimed he was “trying to get his house back in order.” He needed furniture. His place was empty. Robert offered an old TV he could have.
That was the last he heard from King until the day before. At 11:00 A.M., King called him and asked if he could pick up the TV. Robert told King it was raining, so he didn’t have to work—he’d been doing a lot of outside work lately. He was on his way to a gun range, where he enjoyed target shooting.
“I went two, three times a month, usually on days when I had no job—or there was no work because of weather,” Robert told police.
He had to admit, he was becoming addicted to target shooting. His wife knew that he went to the gun range on occasion, sure—but she had no idea how often. He had four guns: a nine millimeter, two small twenty-two pistols, and a Russian pistol.
Salvador politely asked King to shoot with him. Surprisingly, King said yes. Robert asked him if he still had his .357 and King said no. Now King had a nine—but no nine ammunition.
No problem. Robert had plenty of nine ammo, in the box where he kept all his ammo, a sealed plastic box, a dry box, important for when he went boating.
So they went to Knight Trail Park & Gun Range in Nokomis. Salvador could tell that King had never been to this range before because he didn’t know where it was. After trying to give King directions, without success, Robert suggested that they meet at a nearby gas station and then go to the range together. King said fine.
Robert drove his white minivan. King his green Camaro. Later, Robert wondered if King had ever been to any gun range. He didn’t know the rules. When they got to the range, King was wearing a black T-shirt, memorable in that its sleeves were longer than normal.
Robert had given King ammo for his gun. Salvador said to police, “He could have pocketed one or two more.”
He handed over all four guns that had been used at the firing range the previous day. No, he didn’t have King’s gun. As far as he knew, King had King’s gun.
Jane Kowalski woke up at her grandmother’s house and had a cup of coffee in her hand when she turned on the TV. There, full screen, was a picture of Michael King.
“Oh, my God, that’s the guy in the car,” she exclaimed. “Holy crap!”
A picture of Denise Lee came on the TV. She realized that it hadn’t been a child whom she had heard screaming and pounding on the glass, but rather a young woman.
She called the hotline number that flashed on the screen and explained, “You guys probably want to talk to me. I’m the one who made that 911 call.”
“Okay, we’ll get someone to get back with you,” they said.
No one called back.
On the afternoon of January 18, Channel 10 News in Tampa Bay located Michael King’s parents, James and Patsy, in their mobile home in the Tidevue Estates, just north of U.S. 301, in the town of Ellenton, Florida.
James said that he was “worried and scared” for his son. He had not seen Mike in twenty-four hours, and didn’t fully understand what was going on. The entire family had just returned from Michigan on Tuesday afternoon, January 15.
He was asked how the arrest was affecting the family and responded, “We are still trying to figure this out. It has been hard.”
“What is the relationship between your son and the missing woman?” a reporter asked.
“I don’t know. I only hope she is found alive and in good health.”
Patsy chimed in that she heard about it on the TV news. “It is totally out of character for Mike,” she said.
At around that same time, only a few miles to the north from the Kings’ mobile home, the search for Denise had moved to Manatee County after a woman’s sandal was found. Police dogs, officers on foot, and a helicopter were called to the site south of U.S. 301. False alarm.
A pile of women’s clothing was found on the north end of Salford Boulevard, south of Interstate 75, not far from Michael King’s home, but police dogs determined that these did not belong to the victim.
The search team of Trooper Pope was in the woods in the vicinity of King’s arrest; it was tough going because of the thickness of the brush. There were many areas where searchers could barely see the ground.
Among those actively searching for Denise was her father. Rick Goff told Chief Deputy Bill Cameron that he wanted to “stay involved,” and was allowed to do so.
For North Port police, there was an eerie and grim sense of déjà vu. Less than a year and a half before, six-year-old Coralrose Fullwood was abducted from her North Port home in the middle of the night. She was discovered several hours later, raped and murdered, behind a construction site only a few doors